Title
My father at sleep
Creator
Year/Period
1954
Object Type
Material
Technique
Dimension
Image size: 27.5 x 37.4 cm
Accession No.
2024-00332
Collection of
Credit Line
Gift of Lim Yew Kuan
Lim Yew Kuan’s sensitive sketch of his father, Lim Hak Tai, in a private moment of sleep – is testament not only to the close father-and-son relationship but to the other prevailing conditions that both men had found themselves in. Yew Kuan had the opportunity to observe his father at close quarters for long periods of time as they were living together from 1946. The date of 1954 is widely agreed to be of art historical importance. By the time this sketch was made, Lim Hak Tai was already ill. The artist Georgette Chen, in oral interviews with the National Archives had recollected that by the time she joined NAFA (in 1954) that Lim Hak Tai was ‘already a very sick man, suffering from tuberculosis’.
